


vain desires.

by projectfreelancer



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 12:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10360947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/projectfreelancer/pseuds/projectfreelancer
Summary: raphael craves.





	

**Author's Note:**

> unrequited simon/raphael and requited-ish jace/raphael. mostly just raphael being very gay.
> 
> raphael is implied to have sex in this fanfic so.
> 
> warning for some internalized homophobia

Raphael loves men the way he craves blood.

He is not supposed to look at the veins of men and want to consume them. He is not supposed to feel fangs protrude in his mouth. God damns all blood-drinkers spoken softly in Leviticus. Raphael has it memorized, repeats it like a prayer. It is what makes him a monster; damned to hell; kneeling at the heels of Lucifer. This, and his unbeating heart. This, and the hunger gnawing at him. This, and everything he has done since the day he has turned.

He is not supposed to look at the bodies of men and want to consume them. God damns men who sleep with other men. God speaks harshly, and Raphael repeats it like a prayer. And he is not supposed to want Simon. He is not supposed to fall in love with a blood-craving man. He is not supposed to try to give him _everything,_ offer himself up to the boy, speak hope-laced sermons of a future together. He is supposed to be a leader. He is meant to train the boy, teach him, inspire hope for a never ending future with the clan. Falling in love is to be damned. This is what makes him a sinner in God’s eyes. _To love a man is to—_

He falls in love with Simon because Simon is just like him. There is a cracked mirror, there is Simon caressing Raphael's reflection, there is Simon telling the entire world that they are both monsters. Raphael loves him because he knows what it means to die in your grave and rise again. Raphael loves him because he is a monster, he is damned, God has kicked them both out of Heaven, and if he has to go to hell to be with Simon, he will not beg for forgiveness.

And Simon makes it easy to fall out of love with. In a second, he is the sun and the next, he is a storm. There is the Simon that makes jokes at Raphael, and there is the Simon that stabs him in the back. The Simon that stays in the hotel with him, and the Simon that leaves without a second glance. The Simon that looks at Raphael with admiration in his eyes, and the Simon that calls him a monster _._

Raphael is damned in the eyes of God and in the eyes of Simon (as if there is a _difference_ between the two anymore).

 

Simon is easy to fall out of love with (or easy to pretend to fall out of love with), but Jace is easy to consume.

Jace, Raphael knows, is just like him in the ways Simon could never dare to be. They cut themselves open and beg for anyone to crawl in as if they are emptyemptyempty. Raphael has a vampiric soul; Jace has a demonic soul; they are both damned. Simon was something holy, something pure, something that rings like a hymn, something Raphael could get his dirty hands on and _ruin._ But Jace comes to him ruined, devastated, and begs Raphael to ravage him more.

Raphael does not have to get on his knees and beg for hope, for a future, for this man to love him back. Raphael does not want his spitfire love. He gets on his knees and he— _c_ _onsumes._

Simon was something sweet in Raphael’s mouth. Candy-sweet, sickening-soft, eroding at his fangs. But Jace is sour. Jace is bitter. Jace lets Raphael consume at his veins, too, and it’s sinister on Raphael’s tongue.

Jace is just like him because he loves too much. As if Raphael could drain him empty, and he’d still offer more of himself. Jace is a whirlwind of lust & agony & everything Lucifer has created to plague mankind. And if Simon became Raphael’s God, made God a human in his mind, than Jace has done the same with the Devil. Jace is Raphael’s sins in one human.

Jace is the love of men, Jace is the lust that sits like acid in your chest, Jace is Raphael’s bloodlust, Raphael’s envy, Raphael’s wrath. Jace looks at him with _that_ look, and Raphael sins. Jace in his bedroom, and Raphael sins. And Jace laughs at the Bible on Raphael’s bedside, looks at the verse it is opened to—

( **Leviticus 18:22:** _you shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.)_

—and he laughs. “You don’t believe this, do you?”

Raphael swallows, as if he is human again, and does not reply. Jace does not care if he does not reply because Jace only craves, just as Raphael does. They are not their for the intimacy of falling in love.

And when Jace is on his knees for him, as if he's going to pray  _to_ Raphael, he fingers the golden cross that lies around Raphael’s neck.

“God is dead to me.” Jace is blasphemous, but he’s _beautiful._ “It is more fun to sin, don’t you think?” And his smile is the Devil, but his fingers are the work of God.

  
Raphael does not answer him, but when Jace presses an open-mouth kiss to his thigh, Raphael moans in agreement.


End file.
